The Aesthetic Ones

My grandmother owned one of the scariest-looking houses I have ever seen. My grandmother is a cripple, and is incapable of using her legs, but can still get around to taking care of herself even in a wheel chair. Overall aside from the creepy-looking home she's a pretty kind person. Her home consisted of two floors, seven bedrooms and one bathroom. In one of the bedrooms, she had shelves full of very disturbing-looking stuffed bears that highly resembled scarecrows. Unfortunately, I had the distinct pleasure of sleeping in that room every weekend, surrounded by them. They would stare emptily at me until I would finally fell asleep. Apparently, I would scream in the middle of the night, or so my grandmother would tell me when I got up in the morning. I never remembered a single thing about the night before.

The same thing happened every Saturday and Sunday. Fall asleep under the empty stares of those stuffed monstrosities, scream in the middle of the night, and be told about it from Grandmother in the morning.

I snapped. I just couldn't take it anymore. I pleaded with Grandmother to remove those hideous abominations from the bedroom. She gladly removed them and the nightmares stopped.

I was nightmare-free for three weeks. However, on the fourth week I had a nightmare. The scarecrow bears had returned to the shelves and their looks were much more menacing than in my previous dreams. They dropped from the shelves one by one and landed on my bed, surrounding me. I yelled at them to get back, but they continued to advance towards me. Fear gripped me and I couldn’t move a single muscle in my body. The scarecrow bears crawled on top of me and pinned me to the bed. One of them held a ball of yarn and a needle in its tiny plush paws. It threaded the needle and bent towards my face.

It pressed the needle into my upper lip. I was weeping from the intense pain as it pulled the needle out of my mouth. It raised the needle up, pulling the string through the hole in my lip and then it stabbed my bottom lip. I soon found myself unable to speak at all. I wanted desperately to scream, but the threads crisscrossing my mouth made it impossible. I attempted to move, but it seemed like those things weighed as much as a person. I couldn't move at all. I woke up covered in sweat. I checked to make sure that there were no scarecrow bears in the room. I was relieved as Hell when I realized that it had just been a dream, but it was by far the most realistic one I had ever had.

I decided not to tell Grandmother about the experience because I didn't want her to worry about me. The dream was the only thing I could think about for the rest of the day. Those abominations sewing my mouth closed made me shudder. I was too afraid to go to sleep that night, so I just stayed up reading a book.

It was midnight and I was feeling drowsy. My eyelids slowly started to close, and before I could stop myself, I was asleep. A sudden menacing laugh made me open my eyelids again. I was tied to my bed. To my horror, the menacing laughter was coming from the scarecrow bears. They had surrounded my bed again and stared at me with the same menacing look on their faces. I screamed as loud as I could, pleading for my grandmother to help me.

"No one can help you now," one of the bears cooed.

All the bears started laughing maniacally. They turned to an object at the foot of my bed, covered in a white sheet that blended perfectly with the walls of the room. If you didn't look closely, you would miss it. One of the scarecrow bears pulled the cover from the object.

As the cover fell from the object, I screamed in absolute horror. It was Grandmother, crucified to a giant wooden cross. Her eye sockets were empty, and her mouth was sewn shut.

I screamed for help again and again, but no one came to my aid. I was sobbing to myself, wishing that this was just another nightmare.

"This is no dream. You will soon be part of our collection!" The same scarecrow bear spoke again.

The other bears began laughing again as they climbed on top of me. I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

One of the bears emerged from the crowd and held out a ball of yarn in one paw and a needle in the other. It slowly walked towards my face.

I begged them to stop, but they only laughed harder.

This was it. There was no way out. This was my final hour, and just before it started to stitch my mouth shut, a thought came to me.

I would call them The Aesthetic Ones.

Just in an instant after that thought passed my mind, my eyelids flung open! I got up, sweating in tears. The sun was shining through my bedroom windows, and also took note that it 7:31 AM.

I looked around me. No bears, just empty shelves. I thought to myself, what could have happened to them, and most of all why the nightmare.

The array of thoughts running through my head, made me feel insecure, like I was being watched. None of this made any sense at all!

I soon started hearing a rattling noise echoing outside my door, I quickly got out of bed, expecting it to be my grandmother checking up on me. I opened the door, and checked outside the corridor to see her, but nothing came into view!

I quickly ran to her bedroom to check up on her. I turned the doorknob, and as soon I got inside, I found nothing but an empty bed.

I started feeling a sense of worry and insecurity. What if something had happened to her? I would not dare to think of the possibilities, and soon the same rattling noise started echoing through my ears once again.

My heart started intensely beating back and forth as I turned the knob, terrified of what I would find on the other side of that door.

Once I was out into corridor, I saw something that sent shivers down my spine.